I view Privacy Policies as a type of a labeling law, like the ingredients lists on all of your food. Even though only a small fraction of people actually read it, it's still doing its job and its important that it's there.
Some people care about the ingredients in their food, for a variety of reasons. Maybe they're vegan, or Kosher, or allergic to bananas, or are wary of processed sugar. Those people have the ability to make informed decisions, because they are informed. Similarly, privacy-conscious consumers can choose to avoid services based on their particular values when they are informed.
Another important use case is advocacy and/or journalism. If data-sharing arrangements must be public, then a motivated researcher is able to connect the dots, like finding how many sites send data to Facebook/Google, how many of them are health or bank or porn sites, what non-public-brand companies are actually collecting lots of data. Then it's possible for the gestalt "public" to be informed even if each individual isn't doing the reading themselves.
[edit] People are rightly pointing out several of the differences between ingredients lists and privacy policies, especially readability. I agree with this, and view it as a focus for regulation. Ingredients lists are useful in part because they're highly regulated in both contents and format. Privacy policies could be made more useful if they were to take some cues.
Some people care about the ingredients in their food, for a variety of reasons. Maybe they're vegan, or Kosher, or allergic to bananas, or are wary of processed sugar. Those people have the ability to make informed decisions, because they are informed. Similarly, privacy-conscious consumers can choose to avoid services based on their particular values when they are informed.
Another important use case is advocacy and/or journalism. If data-sharing arrangements must be public, then a motivated researcher is able to connect the dots, like finding how many sites send data to Facebook/Google, how many of them are health or bank or porn sites, what non-public-brand companies are actually collecting lots of data. Then it's possible for the gestalt "public" to be informed even if each individual isn't doing the reading themselves.
[edit] People are rightly pointing out several of the differences between ingredients lists and privacy policies, especially readability. I agree with this, and view it as a focus for regulation. Ingredients lists are useful in part because they're highly regulated in both contents and format. Privacy policies could be made more useful if they were to take some cues.